


Quickening

by Lomonaaeren



Series: 2013 Advent Fics [25]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Advent, Dancing, Fluff, Hogwarts, Humor, M/M, Romance, Wizarding Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:43:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco is bored at the holidays, and has volunteered to be a dance teacher at Hogwarts. (McGonagall, for some misguided reason, wants to make the Yule Ball a tradition). Here he meets Potter again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quickening

**Author's Note:**

> Another Advent fic, this time for an anonymous request for a Harry/Draco fic in which both dance and meet again after a long time. I’m afraid that I couldn’t work tango in there, but I hope you enjoy the fic anyway!

“Potter?” Draco could hear his voice crack with his surprise, but he didn’t think he could be blamed. Not only had he not seen Potter for years, if he was here for the reason Draco thought he was…  
  
Potter, who stood in the middle of the Great Hall tilting his head back to look at the ceiling, took his sweet time turning around. His smile was still, his face soft. Draco blinked. There was no malice in the way Potter looked at him, but no interest, either. Draco had become adept at recognizing both since the war.  
  
“Malfoy.” Potter nodded at him, and then glanced over his shoulder with a blinding smile that wasn’t for him. “Headmistress.”  
  
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall nodded to Draco first because he was the closer to her, he suspected, but not because she had any fondness for him. The way her eyes shone in Potter’s direction said who got the fondness _here_. “I know that you think this idea is misguided, Mr. Potter, but I think it might be just what we need.”  
  
“Whatever you say, Headmistress,” said Potter demurely, but he was laughing as he ducked his head, laughing without moving a muscle in his face. Draco saw it all in his eyes. He shook his head. What _was_ going on here?  
  
“We _do_ need a tradition to anchor students at the holidays,” said McGonagall firmly. “The school has had a lot of cheer go out of it since Albus died.” To her credit, Draco thought, she spoke those words without a tremor in her voice or a glance in Draco’s direction. “And it isn’t much fun for the students who stay over Christmas. So we’re going to have a Yule Ball each year, just for them. Maybe some of the others will decide to stay as well, instead of Floo off to join distant families.”  
  
Her voice rose on those last words, and Draco glanced at her. He was willing to wager that it wasn’t just for the students that the Headmistress wanted some cheer at the holidays.  
  
But he had learned not to wield those insights as weapons the way he once would have, and he cleared his throat delicately. “So the dance lessons?”  
  
Potter didn’t jump at the words, which destroyed Draco’s last hope that he was here for different reasons. “Yes,” McGonagall was saying, meanwhile. “I know that you’re trained in the more classical wizarding dances, Mr. Malfoy, but it wouldn’t do much good to have just one teacher. There are too many students who want to learn. So I brought Mr. Potter in.”  
  
Draco was good, most of the time, now. He thought nasty things about other people, but he didn’t often say them. Still, he couldn’t help the derisive glance he gave Potter. “And Potter _is_ trained in them?”  
  
“I learned them over the last few years,” Potter said, emphasizing the difference in the verbs by not emphasizing it. He also seemed to ignore, utterly, the way Draco glared at him. “I think I can keep up with you.”  
  
Draco would have taken the words as a challenge, but McGonagall didn’t give him time. “Excellent! Now that you understand each other, I’ll fetch the students in.” And she bustled off to the doors of the Great Hall to do exactly that.  
  
Draco let his head turn on his neck so slowly it almost creaked, and eyed Potter. Potter ignored him again, gazing serenely at the House tables, which had been pushed back against the walls to clear a dancing space.  
  
“ _You_ will never be graceful enough for this,” Draco muttered to him. “I still remember how clumsy you were at the original Yule Ball.”  
  
Potter smiled without answering. Draco could feel the strength of his good resolve buckling under the strain. Did he really have to stay here and say _nothing_ while Potter silently bragged how good he had become? It wasn’t fair.  
  
Then Draco tamped down on it. What _was_ it, being back in Hogwarts or just being near Potter, that made him feel as if he should shatter? He had successfully controlled the impulse to snap at people dozens of times before this. There was no reason that Potter should be any different. It was giving him too much importance to make him different.  
  
As ridiculous, really, as assuming that he could be a good dance teacher. Draco suspected McGonagall had picked Potter because she knew—from the _Prophet,_ which still reported on everything related to Potter with a breathless that would have been appropriate for mountain climbing—that his friends were overseas, like Draco’s parents, and he wouldn’t have anything else to do.  
  
The students who wanted to learn began to file in, mostly fourth-years and up. McGonagall would probably keep that tradition for who could attend the Yule Ball, then, Draco thought idly. At least there seemed to be a good mixture of the Houses, so he wouldn’t be left alone having to teach no one but Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. The Slytherins opened their eyes wide at him. Draco smiled a little. The _Prophet_ reported on him, too, and his efforts to keep traditional wizarding culture alive, but they wouldn’t all recognize him from that.  
  
“Split into two groups,” McGonagall was calling, as brisk as ever. “One to learn with Mr. Malfoy and one with Mr. Potter.”  
  
Draco was gratified to see slightly more students in the group that came over to him, but not gratified to see that Potter seemed to be paying no attention to that. Potter only nodded to the first student standing in front of him, a tall girl with long brown hair, and stepped forwards with hands extended.  
  
Draco sniffed and turned to face his own first partner. The boy wore a Ravenclaw tie and looked incredibly nervous. He wasn’t as tall as Draco preferred, which was a pity, but Draco gave him a soothing smile anyway and kept his hands out. “What would you like to begin with?” he asked.  
  
The boy bit his lip. “I know—I know the name of a dance,” he mumbled. “I’ve just seen it before. My mother did it once, with my father.”  
  
Draco nodded and kept his voice patient. Particularly with young wizards who were afraid of embarrassing themselves in front of other people as they danced, he’d had to wield that hard-worn patience like cloth, winding it around them. “What was it called?”  
  
“The, um, the Firespark.”  
  
Draco’s eyebrows rose a bit. The Firespark was a lively dance, and a difficult one. He was surprised that it was the first choice this time. On the other hand, the boy might have accomplished dancers as parents, who had made it look easy.  
  
“All right,” Draco said. “The first thing you need to know is that one partner leads. That’ll have to be me right now, because you don’t know it, but when you do know it, then you’ll probably lead a woman onto the dance floor.” He looked quickly at the boy’s face, but there was no sign that the boy was gay and would prefer a male partner instead. His face was a mask of concentration, though, and at least he took Draco’s hands instead of protesting about dancing with a man at all.  
  
“Now,” Draco said, leaning his body to the right and positioning his arms so that the boy leaned left, “you begin with _this_ step…”  
  
Gradually, he guided and glided the boy into the steps of the dance, which were complicated and swirling back on themselves, so that the partners had to keep their heads and their feet and their awareness of what each other’s clothing was doing at all times. If done right, the Firespark should look delicious from the back, with both dancers in trailing robes of red and orange and gold that would make them look surrounded by flames. But it was hard to be the one in the middle of the dance for the first time, and of course the boy tripped over his feet and came up with his face as red as those imagined robes.  
  
Draco heard some of the other people waiting for lessons snicker, but he didn’t look around. “If any of you can manage that long without a stumble, I’ll be impressed,” he said mildly, and then began to flex his fingers on the boy’s wrists, encouraging him to place his hands differently. “If you hold on like _this,_ you’re less likely to trip.”  
  
And he was. Whether it was because the boy had seen the Firespark danced before or had had some training in other types, he picked it up more quickly than many other students Draco had worked with. He flushed with pleasure instead of mortification as Draco told him so, and Draco smiled and pulled back out to the limits of his arms. “Come on. One more time around the floor before I take on someone else.”  
  
As Draco turned the boy, his body sheltering and protecting him from the stares of his classmates as much as possible, he caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye. He sneaked a glance at it, worrying that someone had moved one of the tables out into the middle of the Hall and they would bump into it.  
  
No. Instead, it was Potter and the Hufflepuff girl who had chosen to stand at the front of the line, dancing.  
  
Draco recognized the dance they were performing at once, by the graceful, long steps that ended up spinning both partners in opposite directions more than together before the enchanted white robe with silver embroidery that Potter had obviously Transfigured for the girl. The girl was laughing up into his face with delight, while Potter smiled down at her with a patience that might have been copied from Draco.  
  
And the dance they were doing was the Snowdrift, long and slow—except in the moments of the spins—more complex than someone like Potter ought to have been able to master, and _perfect,_ Potter compensating for all the inadequacies of his partner.  
  
“Mr. Malfoy?”  
  
Draco realized that he had come to a stop and was gaping at Potter and the girl. At least he had done that instead of missing a step and humiliating himself forever. He shook his head and turned back to his partner, glad that he had an answer on the tip of his tongue.  
  
“I was only distracted by the dance Mr. Potter and his partner chose,” he murmured. “A dance of snow, as this is a dance of fire.”  
  
“Oh.” The boy glanced over at the girl in interest, and there was no doubt left in Draco’s mind about who he intended to take to the Yule Ball. “Yes. That’s Melissa Hutchinson. Isn’t she pretty?”  
  
Draco murmured accord, although he had zero opinions about Hutchinson’s prettiness or lack of it. He sped through the last, lively, leaping steps of the dance, which he hadn’t tried with the boy before, as though he had the Automaton Charm on his legs, and released the Ravenclaw, who immediately cut across to Potter and Hutchinson and said something into Potter’s ear.  
  
Potter nodded and smiled at him and released Hutchinson, who blushed up into the Ravenclaw’s face something awful. They pranced off together, doing an imperfect Firespark, and Draco was left to stare at Potter.  
  
Potter just looked back, spreading his hands a little. “What, Malfoy? I told you I could dance.”  
  
Draco didn’t get a chance to open his mouth more than a little, since their next two potential dancers were approaching them, more eager now that they had seen people could make it without tripping over each other. Draco was kept busy demonstrating the steps of the Firespark for people less intrinsically skilled than his first partner, and couldn’t speak to Potter.  
  
But, by Merlin, he watched. And he wondered.  
  
*  
  
“Where did you learn to dance like that, Potter?”  
  
Potter pushed his plate away a little—they were at the Head table in the Great Hall with McGonagall, Flitwick, and a few other professors who had stayed for the holidays—and sighed. “I wondered when this question was coming.” He leaned around Draco to say, “Thank the house-elves for me, would you, Minerva? As good as ever.”  
  
McGonagall nodded and beamed, and then returned to a conversation on dueling with Flitwick that actually sounded interesting. Most of the time, Draco would have tried to get involved in it. He hadn’t dueled often himself, but it was another area where traditional practices of the kind he wanted to protect got concentrated, and that meant he was always better off picking up some knowledge about it.  
  
Now, though, he had someone else to talk to. Potter shoved his chair back from the table and stood up. Draco followed him, grimly. He was _going_ to get the answer to his question, whether or not Potter wanted to give it to him.  
  
He followed him out into the corridor and opened his mouth to repeat himself, with a sharper intonation this time, but Potter was already speaking.  
  
“I learned from the traditional teachers. Probably some of the same ones you learned from.” Potter leaned a shoulder on the wall and turned around to stare at Draco. “In fact, I _know_ at least one of them was the same. Madam Fleetfoot praised you as a graceful dancer to me and said that I danced like you.”  
  
 _Madam Fleetfoot knew what she was talking about,_ Draco thought. He didn’t want to admit that any more than he wanted to break down in his manners around Potter, but again, it should be all right as long as he kept it inside himself. He leaned like Potter was doing, but on the opposite side of the corridor. He didn’t want to show that this mattered to him any more than it did to Potter. “Why did you want to learn?”  
  
“I saw a dance and liked it,” Potter said simply.  
  
Draco waited for more, and waited. Potter didn’t leave, but stood there, attentively watching Draco’s expression, and Draco finally realized that that was all the bastard had any intention of giving him.  
  
He snorted. “You expect me to believe that you saw a traditional pure-blood dance and decided that it was appropriate for someone who fought on the opposite side of the war to learn it?”  
  
Potter’s eyebrows rose slowly. “I didn’t think anything about that,” he said. “It was like deciding to learn another language. I liked it, and so I decided to do it. I learned after the war that my mum’s great-grandmother was Polish. I started to learn to speak Polish, because I thought that was wonderful, that I had a connection to my ancestry. I’m not that good at it, but I’m trying. And I saw those dances, and I’m a wizard.” His voice dipped a little. “Isn’t that what the culture advocates like you are always saying, Malfoy? That those dances really belong to all wizards, not just to pure-bloods, and that it’s a shame no one is dancing them anymore, and we should all be trying as hard as we can to preserve our heritage?”  
  
Draco started, his heart pounding. He had indeed said that, but he hadn’t expected anyone who knew him before the war to _believe_ him. Trust Potter to use his own arguments against him. Not because he had done that much in the past, Draco had to admit. He couldn’t imagine Potter ever taking to pure-blood dance when they were still in school. But Draco found it annoying to have his own arguments used against him, and Potter, of course, had to be as annoying as possible.  
  
He shook his head now, and said roughly, “You can’t just—you didn’t put as much effort into the dancing as you have because you _liked_ it.”  
  
“You agree with Madam Fleetfoot, then.”  
  
Potter’s voice was so bland that he _had_ to be hiding smugness. Draco started to return a sharp answer, but Potter raised a hand and clucked a little in response. “I know you didn’t believe me, Malfoy, but that _is_ the whole story. Since the war, I’ve found myself with no wish to continue the career that I started out wanting, being in the Aurors, and I _have_ found myself with a lot of money and free time. I decided that I had done enough of the good Gryffindor things and had enough duties to last a lifetime. That meant that I could do what I wanted. And doing something because I want to is what led me to the dances.”  
  
Draco continued looking at him. Potter returned that bland expression. At last, the corner of his mouth curled up in a little smile.  
  
“I don’t dance competitively,” he said. “I don’t even dance in public, much, just with my family.” Draco opened his mouth to ask a question about his Muggle family, who, it had always been rumored, didn’t understand much about magic, until he realized that Potter meant the Weasleys. “You don’t need to fear that I’ll take away from your audience, or even show up at pure-blood exhibitions and distract everyone by being a Mudblood’s son.”  
  
Draco did some more staring. His thoughts were a jumble: the word Potter had just said, Potter doing things for _pleasure,_ the half-blood students he had taught who were sometimes more graceful and enthusiastic than the young pure-bloods, the fact that Potter had learned this art but not joined Draco’s efforts to preserve them because he thought that wasn’t what Draco wanted. And the grace with which Potter had whirled across the floor.  
  
It was that last, more than anything else, that made him clear his throat and mumble, “You don’t disgrace your teachers.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Potter, not looking surprised to receive the compliment. Draco wondered if he had expected it, and nearly opened his mouth to talk about how arrogant Potter was if that was the case. But he didn’t really know, and in any case, Potter had already turned away.  
  
Draco followed, fuming under his breath and not understanding what else he wanted to say. At the end of the corridor, Potter turned up the stairs that Draco still remembered led to Gryffindor Tower.  
  
“Staying up with all that gold-and-red rabble like usual?” Draco asked.  
  
“I’m sure you’re enjoying your own stay in the dungeons,” Potter retorted, without looking back at him or missing a beat or a step.  
  
Just as he didn’t do when he was dancing.  
  
Draco went back to the dungeons and fumed at books and Potions journals and the wizarding chess set he had brought to play against himself for several hours before he went to sleep. And then his dreams were full of Potter gliding with the Hutchinson girl around the floor.  
  
And when he woke up in the morning, before he went up for the next round of lessons, he lay there and wondered, if Potter could dance that well with an inexperienced partner, what he would do with one who had grace and skill of his own.  
  
*  
  
“Potter! Wait up.”  
  
Potter halted and turned to him with an air of faint, polite surprise. He hadn’t tried to speak to Draco at all at breakfast that morning, or while they taught a few more traditional dances to the students that morning. The Firespeak and the Snowdrift had gone over best, but some of the students had wanted more intimate dances with more contact between bodies. Draco didn’t blame them. In the Firespark, you had to keep your mind as much on the turns and the flow of your robes as on your partner, and the Snowdrift’s point was to make you spin and turn away from each other.  
  
“Yes, Malfoy?” Potter asked calmly. “Is this about that stumble I made at the end of the waltz? You’re right, you’re the better dancer.”  
  
He’d already turned away, and Draco sped his steps until he caught up with him, insulted at—well, the fact that Potter had assumed Draco was only there to insult him. That _could_ have been Draco’s purpose, might have been a short while ago, but it was extra insulting to him to think that it was the only interaction he was capable of.  
  
“I think we should give the students a different kind of demonstration tomorrow,” Draco said. “The Half-Snowdrift.”  
  
“Interesting.” Potter cocked an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn’t have thought to teach that to them. It’s so complicated. But they do seem to be much better dancers than I thought for a bunch of random people who want to attend the Yule Ball. If you think that we can pick the right partners, people who won’t get too embarrassed, and—”  
  
“That’s not what I was proposing,” Draco said, with the low and emphatic voice that he knew well got him more attention than shouting would. “I thought we should put on the demonstration _together_.”  
  
Potter turned and stared at him. Draco resisted the urge to preen. He had got Potter to _stop_ and _pay attention_ to him. But Potter would probably walk away again if Draco showed how much that mattered to him, so Draco stood there, patiently, and endured the gaze until Potter suddenly shook his head.  
  
“Why would you want to?” Potter asked. “You’re a better dancer than I am, and you know that that dance is intimate enough that—”  
  
“That we shouldn’t be performing it with students anyway,” Draco cut in smoothly. Potter’s eyes darkened a bit, and he blinked. Even that was more of a reaction than Draco had got so far, although he thought it might not be one that was conducive to Potter agreeing to dance with him, so he forged ahead. “I think two experienced dancers could show them what it looks like, and the real _beauty_ of a pure-blood dance. They might think more about it than just as something to learn for the Yule Ball. They might want to go on practicing it later in their lives.”  
  
Potter studied him some more. Then he said, “Look. I know it bothers you that I learned the dances—”  
  
“You have no idea what bothers me,” Draco said, so savagely that he had to wonder if _he_ knew what bothered him, either. Potter looked as if he was about to run away and go get the mediwitch or something, so Draco moderated his voice. “I don’t object to—to people who don’t share my heritage learning the dances. I’ve had some very talented half-blood students.”  
  
“You just object to _me_ learning it,” said Potter, standing lean and tall, his arms folded.  
  
“No!” Draco wondered why it was so easy to get beyond the past and the war with people most of the time, and talk to them about the culture he was fighting to preserve, and so hard with Potter. Maybe because Potter seemed to already agree with him about the value of that culture, and yet they fought anyway. Draco tried to calm down, staring at a point over Potter’s shoulder until he felt ready to meet his eyes again. “I just—I object to us not being able to show some very good dances to the students. They aren’t up to them yet, but I want them to see them.”  
  
Potter cocked his head. Draco looked back at his eyes and took a risk. “I object to not dancing with _you_.”  
  
Potter gave him a glacial blink. Then he said, “Is that the final sign that you’ve gone mad? Do I need to get Madam Pomfrey?”  
  
Draco made a disgusted sound under his breath. “If you don’t want to dance with me, you could just say so, instead of acting like I’m sick for asking.”  
  
“I’m acting like you were mental for asking,” said Potter, and a sharp-edged smile that Draco had never seen out of him flashed. “Me asking if you were sick would go like this.” And he stepped up and put a hand on Draco’s forehead, fingers spread out as if he was checking for a fever.  
  
Draco flushed immediately, and Potter stepped back with his hands spread again. “I don’t think you are,” he said, and eyed Draco’s face. “Although I could if I wanted.”  
  
Draco licked his lips. This was becoming more delicate than he had thought it would be when he first conceived the idea of asking Potter to dance with him, and he wondered if he should pull back, assure Potter he had been joking, and walk the other way.  
  
But his strength rescued him—that, and the sight of the mocking flames that danced in Potter’s eyes. Potter was _waiting_ for him to walk away, Draco realized. He thought this was either a joke or something Draco hadn’t thought through, and he was giving him an out. He probably thought he was being a decent person.  
  
Even if his reasons had changed a bit, though, Draco still wanted to dance with Harry Potter.  
  
He leaned forwards, his hand on the wall above Potter’s head, and whispered into his ear. “If you’re still daring enough, then you can meet me in the Great Hall tomorrow before the students assemble, and we’ll discuss who’s going to lead.” He paused, watching Potter tilt his head back to look at him, and finished, “Even though it’ll be me.”  
  
Then he did a little bow to Potter and walked away. He knew that Potter’s incredulous eyes were on his back, and he refused to look around. He had taken the first risk, and now it was Potter who had to take the second one that entailed accepting Draco’s invitation—  
  
Or rejecting it. He might, Draco supposed. If all his teachers had been the age of Madam Fleetfoot, then he might never have had someone use dancing as a form of flirtation. He might back off for any number of reasons. Because he wasn’t interested in Draco, because he didn’t think it proper to dance something like the Half-Snowdrift in front of the students, because he did what he wanted and this wasn’t something he wanted.  
  
But Draco preferred to think that he wouldn’t back down, and he spent a much calmer night than he had before, the prospect of more whirling around the edges of his thoughts like Hutchison whirling around the floor in Potter’s arms.  
  
*  
  
Potter was waiting in the middle of the Great Hall ten minutes before the students were due to arrive. Draco strolled in. He wasn’t about to admit that he’d had charms monitoring Potter’s position, to make sure that he showed up there after all, or that _he_ had been waiting, concealed, in the entrance hall, for half-an-hour.  
  
Potter’s eyes flared with stubborn fire when he saw Draco. Draco smiled. His challenge was accepted, then. And along with the fire, he now knew Potter possessed grace. This was going to be interesting.  
  
Draco bowed and held out his arm. “Shall we practice before the students get here?” he murmured.  
  
“Perhaps we should.” Potter extended his hand. Draco hid his amusement as he accepted it. Potter was adopting the position—palm upright, fingers curled—that someone would who led the Half-Snowdrift.  
  
Draco twisted to the side the moment he took Potter’s hand, and Potter spun around, too light on his feet to trip, as he probably suspected Draco wanted him to. He came back around with his own face flushed and a flicker in his eyes that Draco could read. He thought this had been a trick all along, and he was ready to show off his own dancing skill.  
  
Draco rearranged their clasp and pulled Potter close. “I told you that I was going to lead,” he scolded lightly, as he settled their hands into the appropriate positions.  
  
Potter looked back and forth from their gripped hands to Draco’s face, and Draco wondered if he would wrench free and walk away. His tensed shoulders said that he had at least considered it.  
  
Draco waited. His mouth was dry and he had to lick his lips more than once, but he could wait. They still had long minutes before the students arrived. They might even be later this morning; they’d had a smaller crowd yesterday than the first day, probably because most of the students had learned all they wanted to.  
  
And then Potter’s smile flashed, and he leaned back against Draco’s arms in the position that the person being guided in the Half-Snowdrift would take. “Show me what you’ve got, then,” he breathed.  
  
The heat that built up between them in that one moment was all in their eyes. They weren’t standing close enough yet to make it body heat. And Draco didn’t care.  
  
“Dance with me,” he whispered, leaning close to Potter, and then he whirled to the right and Potter kept up with him, not missing a beat.  
  
This time, Draco could admit how intoxicating he found that. His chosen task was to protect pure-blood culture, and most of the time, that _meant_ tutoring amateurs, beginners. They couldn’t move opposite him in true equality; they were just learning how to do it, and Draco would be ridiculous to expect more from them.  
  
But Potter’s every movement anticipated his; he whirled when he was supposed to and let Draco guide him out to the limit of his arms, spinning around and around in complete circles, and then spinning back around a single time to come back into the embrace of Draco’s hold. He leaned against Draco’s weight when he was supposed to and bore his own lightly, in a second, without even the courtesy of music to guide him.  
  
Draco had never known that he _could_ dance like this. Somehow, he had missed out on dancing the dances he protected as they were supposed to be done: with a partner who was matched with him in passion and ability. He had had too many teachers, and then too many students. Perhaps it was inevitable, but he could ache, now, for how many things he had missed.  
  
Then he wondered, with the part of his mind that wasn’t hearing the imaginary beat and the music that Potter’s feet and his own added as they turned and leaped and twirled and glided on the floor of the Great Hall, if perhaps he shouldn’t regret that. After all, he could still have certain things _now_.  
  
“Mr. Malfoy! Mr. Potter!”  
  
McGonagall sounded horrified enough to remind Draco of how very sensual a dance the Half-Snowdrift could be, and how fast they had been dancing it, when it was supposed to be slow. He wasn’t sure how to rescue the situation, but he found himself clasping Potter in his arms and shielding him from McGonagall’s sight as he turned to face the doorway.  
  
Potter, apparently allergic to someone protecting him, stepped away from Draco with a shake of his head and a swift smile, and said, “Nothing to be worried about, Headmistress. We were practicing a dance that we thought we’d show the students, and we got a little carried away.”  
  
He put one hand back and pressed it into Draco’s arm as though offering reassurance. But no one would be able to see, from the way they stood, that his fingers were curving back further than that, brushing Draco’s stomach instead, not far from his groin.  
  
Draco’s breath caught. He saw that flare of challenge in Potter’s eyes again as he turned his head, and his breath started coming again, although perhaps a little _too_ fast.  
  
“Yes, well.” McGonagall shook her head, and began to shepherd the students into the Great Hall. “Perhaps something a little slower?”  
  
Her eyes flicked over them with disapproval, and although Draco thought she probably cared mostly about _that_ kind of dancing in front of the students, the high flush on their faces and the way their stance still suggested things she didn’t want her students to think about. Draco inclined his head obediently and stepped away from Potter, separating into two groups again.  
  
But he retained the touch of Potter’s hand burning on his stomach, and not even when he had the pretty Ravenclaw girl who chose to dance with him next pressed against him in the intricate movements of the Winter Circle did it go away.  
  
*  
  
Potter hadn’t been at dinner. Draco frowned as he strode out of the Great Hall. He reckoned that it was possible Potter had decided that they were spending too much time around each other and backed off, or lost his nerve and backed off, but he would have expected better of the man he had danced with that morning.  
  
Then a shadow moved off to the side, and Draco recognized that grace. He kept walking, feeling a half-smile on his face, and felt Potter fall at his side even before he saw him.  
  
“We know how to move together,” said Potter.  
  
Draco made a noncommittal noise. It made sense, now that he thought about it, that Potter might want to meet with him away from the Headmistress’s eyes, in case her disapproval extended further and into more areas than Draco had realized.  
  
“I want to experience other kinds of movement.”  
  
That burning touch seized Draco’s stomach again, and he turned and grasped Potter’s arms. “Another dance, first?” he whispered.  
  
Potter smiled. “You know enough of the small dances? Or have large enough rooms that we can dance without tripping over anything?”  
  
“I know spells to clear out my rooms,” Draco said simply, and then blinked. “And I will have you know that I can dance _every single_ dance that the teachers offer, Potter.” He stroked the middle of Potter’s back, feeling how lean he was under it, thinking that he felt as though he spent more time dancing than flying. “Do you?” He lowered his voice, and if Potter was going to back out, he should do it now, because there was no disguising where this was going, unless Potter was an idiot.  
  
And no one who knew how to move like that was an idiot.  
  
Potter smiled at him. “Lots of dances,” he said. “All kinds.” This time, he was the one who led, if only to pull Draco towards the dungeons.  
  
*  
  
The rooms McGonagall had given Draco were apparently old professors’ quarters, used a lot by former Slytherin students visiting the school. They were comfortable enough, with chairs that sank under him and tapestries on the walls and a huge fireplace, but Draco moved all the furniture over to the walls now with a single flick of his wand, uncaring about the placement of any of it.  
  
Potter looked around carefully. “No portraits here?” he asked.  
  
Draco turned back towards him, the burning cooling a little. “Worried about someone seeing you dancing with a Slytherin, Potter?” he asked, extending his arms.  
  
“Call me Harry,” Potter said, and moved forwards and into them. “No. I don’t want a portrait watching what we get up to when we change the kind of dancing we do.” He flashed Draco an expression that had too much heat in it to resemble a normal smile.  
  
Draco snatched him up again and once again took the lead part, although this dance was a much more restrained version of the Winter Circle he had been doing with the Ravenclaw girl this morning in the Great Hall, instead of the Half-Snowdrift.  
  
This time, _Harry_ was moving against him with deliberate intent, dancing like an arrow in flight, now arcing, now leaning close and moving his lips in what was probably obscene suggestion but didn’t sound like it against Draco’s ear. Draco hissed a little, quietly. His back arched despite himself, and Harry didn’t move away from him with an offended frown, even though that movement wasn’t part of the dance, but pressed closer. A laugh broke from him, but it wasn’t the mocking one Draco had anticipated.  
  
“I think we’ve done too much of our dancing upright,” Harry panted.  
  
And he shoved Draco backwards, in an odd mixture of dancing backwards and not reclaiming the lead role, and pinned Draco’s back against the wall. Then his lips were moving against Draco’s in the same soft, subtle movements that he’d used against Draco’s ear, and his body was still moving, whirling, in considerably restricted motions, against Draco’s chest and front.  
  
His cock touched Draco’s.  
  
Draco gave up on even the pretense of a dance, and seized him again, holding him still, making Harry lift his face and give his lips up to Draco’s movements. Harry answered him with a darting probe and stab of his tongue that might be “natural” for a dancer, but which Draco had never felt before, and his eagerness blazed as he leaned forwards and stabbed with his hips in response.  
  
They kept their hands on each other’s arms, chaste even with no one around to witness it, and Harry’s tongue danced in Draco’s mouth and Draco’s hips danced against Harry’s groin, and they rolled and shivered and the heat built, and Draco still thought Harry’s body blazing with grace—  
  
And then the quickening moment rolled through them, the sacred moment when he felt a dance partner take flight in his arms and knew someone new had learned, that the knowledge would whirl forwards through a new generation.  
  
This time, it was echoed back to him in the ragged gasps Harry uttered, tearing his mouth away from Draco’s to breathe on his neck. Draco thrust sharply, constrained by the tight hold Harry had on him, as he was restrained by the formal steps in one of the dances.  
  
He liked it. _God,_ he liked it, all this wildness held firm between the two of them, tamed by an art they both understood.  
  
Harry gripped him and shuddered in response, timing his shudders, it seemed to Draco, for the moments when Draco wasn’t having them, so that the dance could continue, the movements could go on.  
  
At last, it ended, because it had to end, and Draco held Harry as the pleasure subsided. The heat didn’t. Harry chuckled against his hair.  
  
“I would want to do that again immediately, except I’m so exhausted,” he murmured.  
  
Draco stroked his back. Harry could be graceful with his words, too, he thought. He could have pulled away and said something awkward or stupid, and the Potter Draco had known would have.  
  
But the Potter he’d known couldn’t dance, either.  
  
“You’ll stay, so that we can do it again in the morning?” Draco murmured. “Or would that be too shocking to the Headmistress?”  
  
Harry pulled back and gave that smile, as edged as the moment when he’d tried to claim the lead in their dance that morning.  
  
“As long as we arrive on time tomorrow, I don’t think the Headmistress needs to know what we do,” Harry answered, and then kissed Draco.  
  
Draco lifted his hands and cradled Harry’s face, stroking his skin, learning his body with a different kind of motion.  
  
And then Harry was steering him towards the bed, and Draco was happy enough to let him claim that lead.  
  
 _Come morning, we can dance again._  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
